Complete Works of Edmund Burke

by Edmund Burke

  My Lords, strongly impressed as they are with these sentiments, the Commons have conducted themselves with singular care and caution. Without losing the spirit and zeal of a public prosecution, they have comported themselves with such moderation, temper, and decorum as would not have ill become the final judgment, if with them rested the final judgment, of this great cause.

  With very few intermissions, the affairs of India have constantly engaged the attention of the Commons for more than fourteen years. We may safely affirm we have tried every mode of legislative provision before we had recourse to anything of penal process. It was in the year 1774 [1773?] we framed an act of Parliament for remedy to the then existing disorders in India, such as the then information before us enabled us to enact. Finding that the act of Parliament did not answer all the ends that were expected from it, we had, in the year 1782, recourse to a body of monitory resolutions. Neither had we the expected fruit from them. When, therefore, we found that our inquiries and our reports, our laws and our admonitions, were alike despised, that enormities increased in proportion as they were forbidden, detected, and exposed, — when we found that guilt stalked with an erect and upright front, and that legal authority seemed to skulk and hide its head like outlawed guilt, — when we found that some of those very persons who were appointed by Parliament to assert the authority of the laws of this kingdom were the most forward, the most bold, and the most active in the conspiracy for their destruction, — then it was time for the justice of the nation to recollect itself. To have forborne longer would not have been patience, but collusion; it would have been participation with guilt; it would have been to make ourselves accomplices with the criminal.

  We found it was impossible to evade painful duty without betraying a sacred trust. Having, therefore, resolved upon the last and only resource, a penal prosecution, it was our next business to act in a manner worthy of our long deliberation. In all points we proceeded with selection. We have chosen (we trust it will so appear to your Lordships) such a crime, and such a criminal, and such a body of evidence, and such a mode of process, as would have recommended this course of justice to posterity, even if it had not been supported by any example in the practice of our forefathers.

  First, to speak of the process: we are to inform your Lordships, that, besides that long previous deliberation of fourteen years, we examined, as a preliminary to this proceeding, every circumstance which could prove favorable to parties apparently delinquent, before we finally resolved to prosecute. There was no precedent to be found in the Journals, favorable to persons in Mr. Hastings’s circumstances, that was not applied to. Many measures utterly unknown to former Parliamentary proceedings, and which, indeed, seemed in some degree to enfeeble them, but which were all to the advantage of those that were to be prosecuted, were adopted, for the first time, upon this occasion. In an early stage of the proceeding, the criminal desired to be heard. He was heard; and he produced before the bar of the House that insolent and unbecoming paper which lies upon our table. It was deliberately given in by his own hand, and signed with his own name. The Commons, however, passed by everything offensive in that paper with a magnanimity that became them. They considered nothing in it but the facts that the defendant alleged, and the principles he maintained; and after a deliberation not short of judicial, we proceeded with confidence to your bar.

  So far as to the process; which, though I mentioned last in the line and order in which I stated the objects of our selection, I thought it best to dispatch first.

  As to the crime which we chose, we first considered well what it was in its nature, under all the circumstances which attended it. We weighed it with all its extenuations and with all its aggravations. On that review, we are warranted to assert that the crimes with which we charge the prisoner at the bar are substantial crimes, — that they are no errors or mistakes, such as wise and good men might possibly fall into, which may even produce very pernicious effects without being in fact great offences. The Commons are too liberal not to allow for the difficulties of a great and arduous public situation. They know too well the domineering necessities which frequently occur in all great affairs. They know the exigency of a pressing occasion, which, in its precipitate career, bears everything down before it, — which does not give time to the mind to recollect its faculties, to reinforce its reason, and to have recourse to fixed principles, but, by compelling an instant and tumultuous decision, too often obliges men to decide in a manner that calm judgment would certainly have rejected. We know, as we are to be served by men, that the persons who serve us must be tried as men, and with a very large allowance indeed to human infirmity and human error. This, my Lords, we knew and we weighed before we came before you. But the crimes which we charge in these articles are not lapses, defects, errors of common human frailty, which, as we know and feel, we can allow for. We charge this offender with no crimes that have not arisen from passions which it is criminal to harbor, — with no offences that have not their root in avarice, rapacity, pride, insolence, ferocity, treachery, cruelty, malignity of temper, — in short, in [with?] nothing that does not argue a total extinction of all moral principle, that does not manifest an inveterate blackness of heart, dyed in grain with malice, vitiated, corrupted, gangrened to the very core. If we do not plant his crimes in those vices which the breast of man is made to abhor, and the spirit of all laws, human and divine, to interdict, we desire no longer to be heard upon this occasion. Let everything that can be pleaded on the ground of surprise or error, upon those grounds be pleaded with success: we give up the whole of those predicaments. We urge no crimes that were not crimes of forethought. We charge him with nothing that he did not commit upon deliberation, — that he did not commit against advice, supplication, and remonstrance, — that he did not commit against the direct command of lawful authority, — that he did not commit after reproof and reprimand, the reproof and reprimand of those who were authorized by the laws to reprove and reprimand him. The crimes of Mr. Hastings are crimes not only in themselves, but aggravated by being crimes of contumacy. They were crimes, not against forms, but against those eternal laws of justice which are our rule and our birthright. His offences are, not in formal, technical language, but in reality, in substance and effect, high crimes and high misdemeanors.

  So far as to the crimes. As to the criminal, we have chosen him on the same principle on which we selected the crimes. We have not chosen to bring before you a poor, puny, trembling delinquent, misled, perhaps, by those who ought to have taught him better, but who have afterwards oppressed him by their power, as they had first corrupted him by their example. Instances there have been many, wherein the punishment of minor offences, in inferior persons, has been made the means of screening crimes of an high order, and in men of high description. Our course is different. We have not brought before you an obscure offender, who, when his insignificance and weakness are weighed against the power of the prosecution, gives even to public justice something of the appearance of oppression: no, my Lords, we have brought before you the first man of India, in rank, authority, and station. We have brought before you the chief of the tribe, the head of the whole body of Eastern offenders, a captain-general of iniquity, under whom all the fraud, all the peculation, all the tyranny in India are embodied, disciplined, arrayed, and paid. This is the person, my Lords, that we bring before you. We have brought before you such a person, that, if you strike at him with the firm and decided arm of justice, you will not have need of a great many more examples. You strike at the whole corps, if you strike at the head.

  So far as to the crime: so far as to the criminal. Now, my Lords, I shall say a few words relative to the evidence which we have brought to support such a charge, and which ought to be equal in weight to the charge itself. It is chiefly evidence of record, officially signed by the criminal himself in many instances. We have brought before you his own letters, authenticated by his own hand. On these we chiefly rely. But we shall likewise bring before you living witnesses
, competent to speak to the points to which they are brought.

  When you consider the late enormous power of the prisoner, — when you consider his criminal, indefatigable assiduity in the destruction of all recorded evidence, — when you consider the influence he has over almost all living testimony, — when you consider the distance of the scene of action, — I believe your Lordships, and I believe the world, will be astonished that so much, so clear, so solid, and so conclusive evidence of all kinds has been obtained against him. I have no doubt that in nine instances in ten the evidence is such as would satisfy the narrow precision supposed to prevail, and to a degree rightly to prevail, in all subordinate power and delegated jurisdiction. But your Lordships will maintain, what we assert and claim as the right of the subjects of Great Britain, that you are not bound by any rules of evidence, or any other rules whatever, except those of natural, immutable, and substantial justice.

  God forbid the Commons should desire that anything should be received as proof from them which is not by nature adapted to prove the thing in question! If they should make such a request, they would aim at overturning the very principles of that justice to which they resort; they would give the nation an evil example that would rebound back on themselves, and bring destruction upon their own heads, and on those of all their posterity.

  On the other hand, I have too much confidence in the learning with which you will be advised, and the liberality and nobleness of the sentiments with which you are born, to suspect that you would, by any abuse of the forms, and a technical course of proceeding, deny justice to so great a part of the world that claims it at your hands. Your Lordships always had an ample power, and almost unlimited jurisdiction; you have now a boundless object. It is not from this district or from that parish, not from this city or the other province, that relief is now applied for: exiled and undone princes, extensive tribes, suffering nations, infinite descriptions of men, different in language, in manners, and in rites, men separated by every barrier of Nature from you, by the Providence of God are blended in one common cause, and are now become suppliants at your bar. For the honor of this nation, in vindication of this mysterious Providence, let it be known that no rule formed upon municipal maxims (if any such rule exists) will prevent the course of that imperial justice which you owe to the people that call to you from all parts of a great disjointed world. For, situated as this kingdom is, an object, thank God, of envy to the rest of the nations, its conduct in that high and elevated situation will undoubtedly be scrutinized with a severity as great as its power is invidious.

  It is well known that enormous wealth has poured into this country from India through a thousand channels, public and concealed; and it is no particular derogation from our honor to suppose a possibility of being corrupted by that by which other empires have been corrupted, and assemblies almost as respectable and venerable as your Lordships’ have been directly or indirectly vitiated. Forty millions of money, at least, have within our memory been brought from India into England. In this case the most sacred judicature ought to look to its reputation. Without offence we may venture to suggest that the best way to secure reputation is, not by a proud defiance of public opinion, but by guiding our actions in such a manner as that public opinion may in the end be securely defied, by having been previously respected and dreaded. No direct false judgment is apprehended from the tribunals of this country; but it is feared that partiality may lurk and nestle in the abuse of our forms of proceeding. It is necessary, therefore, that nothing in that proceeding should appear to mark the slightest trace, should betray the faintest odor of chicane. God forbid, that, when you try the most serious of all causes, that, when you try the cause of Asia in the presence of Europe, there should be the least suspicion that a narrow partiality, utterly destructive of justice, should so guide us that a British subject in power should appear in substance to possess rights which are denied to the humble allies, to the attached dependants of this kingdom, who by their distance have a double demand upon your protection, and who, by an implicit (I hope not a weak and useless) trust in you, have stripped themselves of every other resource under heaven!

  I do not say this from any fear, doubt, or hesitation concerning what your Lordships will finally do, — none in the world; but I cannot shut my ears to the rumors which you all know to be disseminated abroad. The abusers of power may have a chance to cover themselves by those fences and intrenchments which were made to secure the liberties of the people against men of that very description. But God forbid it should be bruited from Pekin to Paris, that the laws of England are for the rich and the powerful, but to the poor, the miserable, and defenceless they afford no resource at all! God forbid it should be said, no nation is equal to the English in substantial violence and in formal justice, — that in this kingdom we feel ourselves competent to confer the most extravagant and inordinate powers upon public ministers, but that we are deficient, poor, helpless, lame, and impotent in the means of calling them to account for their use of them! An opinion has been insidiously circulated through this kingdom, and through foreign nations too, that, in order to cover our participation in guilt, and our common interest in the plunder of the East, we have invented a set of scholastic distinctions, abhorrent to the common sense and unpropitious to the common necessities of mankind, by which we are to deny ourselves the knowledge of what the rest of the world knows, and what so great a part of the world both knows and feels. I do not deprecate any appearance which may give countenance to this aspersion from suspicion that any corrupt motive can influence this court; I deprecate it from knowing that hitherto we have moved within the narrow circle of municipal justice. I am afraid, that, from the habits acquired by moving within a circumscribed sphere, we may be induced rather to endeavor at forcing Nature into that municipal circle than to enlarge the circle of national justice to the necessities of the empire we have obtained.

  This is the only thing which does create any doubt or difficulty in the minds of sober people. But there are those who will not judge so equitably. Where two motives, neither of them perfectly justifiable, may be assigned, the worst has the chance of being preferred. If, from any appearance of chicane in the court, justice should fail, all men will say, better there were no tribunals at all. In my humble opinion, it would be better a thousand times to give all complainants the short answer the Dey of Algiers gave a British ambassador, representing certain grievances suffered by the British merchants,— “My friend,” (as the story is related by Dr. Shaw,) “do not you know that my subjects are a band of robbers, and that I am their captain?” — better it would be a thousand times, and a thousand thousand times more manly, than an hypocritical process, which, under a pretended reverence to punctilious ceremonies and observances of law, abandons mankind without help and resource to all the desolating consequences of arbitrary power. The conduct and event of this cause will put an end to such doubts, wherever they may be entertained. Your Lordships will exercise the great plenary powers with which you are invested in a manner that will do honor to the protecting justice of this kingdom, that will completely avenge the great people who are subjected to it. You will not suffer your proceedings to be squared by any rules but by their necessities, and by that law of a common nature which cements them to us and us to them. The reports to the contrary have been spread abroad with uncommon industry; but they will be speedily refuted by the humanity, simplicity, dignity, and nobleness of your Lordships’ justice.

  Having said all that I am instructed to say concerning the process which the House of Commons has used, concerning the crimes which they have chosen, concerning the criminal upon whom they attach the crimes, and concerning the evidence which they mean to produce, I am now to proceed to open that part of the business which falls to my share. It is rather an explanation of the circumstances than an enforcement of the crimes.

  Your Lordships of course will be apprised that this cause is not what occurs every day, in the ordinary round of municipal affairs, — that it has
a relation to many things, that it touches many points in many places, which are wholly removed from the ordinary beaten orbit of our English affairs. In other affairs, every allusion immediately meets its point of reference; nothing can be started that does not immediately awaken your attention to something in your own laws and usages which you meet with every day in the ordinary transactions of life. But here you are caught, as it were, into another world; you are to have the way pioneered before you. As the subject is new, it must be explained; as it is intricate as well as new, that explanation can be only comparatively short: and therefore, knowing your Lordships to be possessed, along with all other judicial virtues, of the first and foundation of them all, judicial patience, I hope that you will not grudge a few hours to the explanation of that which has cost the Commons fourteen years’ assiduous application to acquire, — that your Lordships will not disdain to grant a few hours to what has cost the people of India upwards of thirty years of their innate, inveterate, hereditary patience to endure.

  My Lords, the powers which Mr. Hastings is charged with having abused are the powers delegated to him by the East India Company. The East India Company itself acts under two very dissimilar sorts of powers, derived from two sources very remote from each other. The first source of its power is under charters which the crown of Great Britain was authorized by act of Parliament to grant; the other is from several charters derived from the Emperor of the Moguls, the person in whose dominions they were chiefly conversant, — particularly that great charter by which, in the year 1765, they acquired the high-stewardship of the kingdoms of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa. Under those two bodies of charters, the East India Company, and all their servants, are authorized to act.